{"id":504512,"date":"2026-01-09T20:26:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T20:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/504512\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T20:26:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T20:26:14","slug":"dead-whale-found-off-the-coast-of-bethany-beach-the-latest-from-wdel-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/504512\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead whale found off the coast of Bethany Beach | The Latest from WDEL News"},"content":{"rendered":"

A local research institute is investigating the cause of death for a whale that beached near Bethany Beach on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A dead whale beached near Bethany Beach on January 8, 2026<\/p>\n

MERR Institute<\/p>\n

The Marine Education Research and Rehabilitation Institute (MERR) said they were alerted Tuesday to a juvenile humpback whale floating at sea level about 2 miles off of Indian River Inlet.<\/p>\n

The whale is bloated, but they say a postmortum necropsy will be needed to determine the cause of death.<\/p>\n

It’s the third dead whale found off of the Delaware coast in the past 10 months, after a 35-foot long humpback whale was found<\/a> on March 31, 2025, just three weeks after another one was round near Delaware Seashore State Park.<\/p>\n

Humpback whales migrate between the West Indies and the Gulf of Maine to calve and mate in the southern regions<\/a>, according to NOAA.<\/p>\n

\"dead<\/p>\n

A dead whale seen floating in the Atlantic Ocean off of Bethany Beach on January 8, 2026<\/p>\n

WBOC | Chopper 16<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A local research institute is investigating the cause of death for a whale that beached near Bethany Beach…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":504513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[226071,226074,83492,226072,226069,173252,4301,226070,71813,159,67,132,68,12793,226073,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-504512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-animals-with-only-two-limbs","9":"tag-aquatic-mammals","10":"tag-cetaceans","11":"tag-cetology","12":"tag-mammalogy","13":"tag-mammals","14":"tag-marine-biology","15":"tag-marine-mammals","16":"tag-oceanography","17":"tag-science","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-whales","22":"tag-whippomorphs","23":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115867024285504736","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}